Reverend Clementa Pinckney knew the Bible from back to front. But according to a close spiritual colleague, one of Pinckney’s most treasured passages was the “Parable of the Sower.” The scripture tells the story of a teaching Jesus Christ delivered from a boat in the Sea of Galilee where he spoke of a man who scattered seeds along the ground. Some fell on rocks or among thorns where they failed to take root.
Continue reading “Generation Emanuel: Meet The Black Lawmakers Whose Careers Were Ignited By The Charleston Shooting “A Searing Weekend Of Political Violence In America
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
Another Spasm Of Political Violence
Vance Luther Boelter, 57, was captured late Sunday in Minnesota and charged in the assassination of former state House Speaker Melissa Hortman (D) and her husband, Mark, and the attempted assassination of state Sen. John Hoffman (D) and his wife, Yvette.
One of the debilitating aspects of any violence is how final and definitive it is and how anemic any response to it feels. Capturing and trying the alleged culprit are necessary next steps but nothing unwinds what was done. Nothing sets things right.
The story of who Boelter is and how he did what he did is unsatisfying no matter how many particular details are uncovered and strung together. Piecing together motive, political ideology, and the catalysts that pushed him into unspeakable violence tries to serve our desire for meaning by establishing cause and effect. Maybe it will. Maybe it won’t.
Setting aside for now the particulars in Minnesota, what we do know is that violence and violent rhetoric begets more violence. While political violence has been a recurring feature of American political life, what marks the Trump era and makes it so different is that the president of the United States has immersed himself with almost gleeful fascination in violent threats, themes, urges, and impulses. Trump mythologizes violence.
For a decade now, Trump has fed his supporters with ever more lavish displays of violence – ugly threats and smears, mass deportations, harsh reprisals against foes, an attack on the Capitol. The episodic violence serve as totems of their tribalism. Over time, it takes ever greater shows of violence to feed the hunger for it. The next performative violence must out-do what came before.
It’s not clear where it ends. But it’s not nearly over yet.
The Weekend’s Major Deportation Developments
- Under political pressure, the Trump administration abruptly shifted its deportation focus away from enforcement actions in the agricultural industry, hotel, and restaurant industries, the NYT reports.
- The Trump administration is considering adding 36 countries to its travel ban list, but countries can avoid being added to the list if they agree to accept third-country nationals deported from the United States, according to an internal memo reviewed by the WaPo.
- In an unhinged social media post, President Trump directed federal immigration officials to prioritize deportations from Democratic-run cities:
Posse Comitatus?
Marines in Los Angeles were photographed by Reuters in what was the first known detention of a civilian as part of its deployment in support of mass deportations. The man was quickly released.
Good Read
Inae Oh on The “Delicate, Beautiful, Tiny” Fascism of Kristi Noem
PHOTOS: The No Kings Protests
ICYMI: a collection of photos of the anti-Trump protests gathered from TPM readers and professional photographers.
The New Trump DOJ: Prosecute And Publicize
Reuters: “The U.S. Justice Department on Thursday ordered federal prosecutors to prioritize criminal prosecution of protesters who destroy property or assault law enforcement, and to make sure every case they bring gets publicized, according to an internal email seen by Reuters.”
Inside The Trump DOJ’s ‘Rubber Room’
We’ve known for a few months that some career Justice Department lawyers perceived as insufficiently loyal to the President were consigned to dead-end work on sanctuary cities. Now CBS News goes inside what has been dubbed the “rubber room.”
Judge Blocks Key Parts Of Trump’s Elections EO
In a new preliminary injunction, U.S. District Judge Denise J. Casper of Massachusetts blocked two key elements of President Trump’s executive order on elections: (i) allowing the federal government to require proof of citizenship to register to vote; and (ii) enforcing against states an Election Day deadline for counting mail-in ballots. No other judge had yet blocked the ballot-counting provision. Both provisions will remain blocked while the litigation proceeds.
More Big Law Firm Fallout
Seven partners at Willkie Farr & Gallagher, one of the law firms that struck a deal with President Trump, are leaving to join the Cooley law firm, which represented Jenner & Block in its successful challenge of the Trump executive order that targeted it.
About Trump’s Parade …
TPM’s Hunter Walker offers his account of President Trump’s long-sought strongman-style military parade in DC.
For the perspective of a seasoned major events planner, this thread from Doug Landry is a fun romp through the image-making and planning fails of the parade.
The Corruption: Cryptocurrency Edition
President Trump earned around $57 million from his stake in his family-backed cryptocurrency firm World Liberty Financial last year, according to a new financial disclosure form, when the venture was still in its infancy and hadn’t yet burgeoned after his inauguration.
Quote Of The Day
“They knew that these were losing positions from the beginning and were not actually hoping to win in court, but rather to intimidate firms into settling, as many firms did. Now that they have racked up the four losses in district courts, it is not surprising that they are not appealing, because I don’t think they ever thought these were serious positions.”–Cornell law professor W. Bradley Wendel, on President Trump’s strategy of targeting big law firms with executive orders and not appealing his losses in lower courts
A Deep Dive On Amy Coney Barrett
Two nuggets from the NYT’s well-reported examination of Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s emerging role on the Supreme Court:
- “Soon after Justice Barrett arrived at the court … Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. assigned her to write a majority opinion — among her first — allowing the seizure of state property in a pipeline case, according to several people aware of the process. But she then changed her mind and took the opposite stance, a bold move that risked irritating the chief justice.”
- “This spring, on Stephen K. Bannon’s podcast, [right-wing legal activist Mike Davis] tore into [Barrett] in such crude terms, even mocking the size of her family, that Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, for whom Mr. Davis had once clerked, phoned him to express disapproval of his comments, according to people aware of the exchange.”
For Your Radar …
Senate Republicans are moving to replace the provision in the House GOP “big, beautiful bill” that would make it harder for judges to enforce contempt of court violations with a provision that … would make it more costly to sue the federal government.
Only The Best People
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., says one of his new appointees to the vaccine panel that he wholesale fired is a George Washington University professor – but the school says he doesn’t work there.
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Trump’s Military Parade Marched Through A Divided Washington
WASHINGTON, DC—President Trump’s big birthday parade was met by protests and scenes in the nation’s capital that showed how split the country has become in his second term.
Saturday’s event — which came with an estimated cost of $25 million to $45 million — was mired in controversy before it began, with concerns about tanks damaging the streets around the National Mall and polls showing nearly two thirds of American adults did not approve of spending public funds on the spectacle. It also took place against the backdrop of protests against Trump’s mass deportation drive in California, which have been met with arrests and an often-violent response from a mixture of local law enforcement and federal forces, including ICE and the military.
While the U.S. has previously held military parades following victories on the battlefield, this march was unmistakably all about Trump. The president has pushed for a military parade since early in his first term after being impressed by a Bastille celebration that he saw in France. Saturday’s events were billed as honoring the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army, but they also coincided with Trump’s 79th birthday.
Trump and other officials watched the procession of soldiers and armored vehicles from a reviewing stand, but many people on the ground in Washington did not witness any of the show of force. Instead, they were treated to vivid demonstrations of the tensions inspired by Trump’s administration.
Despite a clear threat of violence from the crackdown on the West Coast and comments from Trump last week that any protests at his parade would be “met with very heavy force,” hundreds of demonstrators turned out in D.C. Around the country, millions of activists countered Trump’s event with a massive nationwide wave of “No Kings” rallies and marches. However, the organizers of that group specifically avoided the nation’s capital due to what they described as potential for “conflict” with thousands of troops in the city.
But the lack of a larger organized event did not stop some protesters, who felt it was crucial to make a direct stand against the president. While there were anti-Trump activists scattered throughout Washington on Saturday, the largest demonstration was a march from the Logan Circle neighborhood to Lafayette Park, which sits just outside the White House.
“This is the only place to be!” one speaker declared through a megaphone. “Right across from the White House! As close as they’ll let us go.”
The site of the demonstration is a significant one in Washington’s recent history. During Trump’s first term, Lafayette Park and the surrounding streets were the center of Black Lives Matter protests that erupted following the death of George Floyd in 2020. Trump met those crowds with tear gas, the National Guard, and an array of federal law enforcement in the final months of the president’s first term. Since Trump took office again earlier this year, Republicans in Congress have literally pushed to erase some of that history and pressed D.C. to paint over the mural that once marked the area outside the park as “Black Lives Matter Plaza.”
On Saturday, black security fencing that was installed ahead of the parade kept the crowds out of the half of the park closest to the White House. Signs and speakers addressed a myriad of issues including concerns about ICE, the war in Gaza, and Trump’s drastic cuts to federal agencies. The main organizer of the march and rally in the park was a group named “Refuse Fascism.” Their signage called for Trump’s ouster and equated his event to a dictatorial spectacle. It included placards that said “TRUMP MUST GO NOW” and “NO TO TRUMP’S FASCIST MILITARY PARADE.”
While the view from the ground in Washington D.C. on Saturday showed off the vehement opposition to Trump, there were also signs of the support he enjoys. In Lafayette Park, some Trump fans and right wing activists clashed with the protesters. This included livestreamers eager to engage in the trolling and digital debate that has become a defining feature of our political moment. Right-wing Florida radio host turned congressional candidate Mark Kaye patrolled the edge of the park engaging in arguments as his phone camera rolled. Another man wielded a puppet named Edgar that has over 80,000 subscribers on a YouTube page featuring his mocking interactions with liberals and merch that gleefully embraces the term “fascist.”
“Which way Western man? Patriotic male or buttersoft bitch?” Edgar and his puppeteer asked.
After over an hour in Lafayette Park, the demonstrators proceeded to march back to Logan Circle. En route, an English professor from West Virginia named Emily Ziebarth talked to TPM and acknowledged the threat of violence that hung over the event.
“I … have been to — I can’t even count how many protests now since January — and I take my child, usually. And one thing that changed for me this week was that I decided not to bring my kid, but I decided I had to go to the nation’s capital because these are literally our streets,” Ziebarth said. “To be told that we can’t come exercise the right that we literally made a country about is lunacy.”
Ziebarth said she planned to stay in Washington throughout the day in order “to be wherever I can have my voice and my body on the line for our country.”
“I respect the people and those organizations who want to keep people safe, but it’s pre-emptively compliant and, I think, if you just tell the person who you’re protesting that you will do what they say immediately when they threaten anything, they’re going to keep going even harder,” Ziebarth said. “So, there’s nowhere else that I would have been today.”
As the crowd of marchers approached Logan Circle, they chanted “Hands off LA!” and blared music including the anti-fascist anthem “Bella Ciao.” A man who gave his name was Osi said he came to D.C. from Maryland — which hosted “No Kings” demonstrations — because fascism “wins when everyone’s quiet and subservient to their fear tactics.”
“I came into the district because this is where the seat of power is. I think, ultimately, ‘No Kings’ is correct to not have a big presence here. It could end up violent, but at the end of the day, Trump is back there. He’s at the White House,” Osi said, pointing down the street. “Being anywhere but where Trump is and where his military parade is isn’t going to be as effective because he can ignore us there. Here, he can’t ignore us — we’re right there in front of his door.”
The crowd largely dispersed after arriving in Logan Circle. Volunteers clad in neon vests made the rounds and warned people that the permit for the event was set to expire. They also encouraged the protesters to leave in groups.
“We don’t know what MAGA might be lurking,” one man said.
Ultimately, despite the ominous overtones, the day remained nonviolent. On Sunday morning, a spokesperson for the Washington Metropolitan Police Department told TPM “zero arrests were made” in conjunction with the parade and associated demonstrations. In Logan Circle, some of the protesters were evidently pleased with the lack of conflict generated by the event in a city others had avoided.
“We are so peaceful!” a man shouted as the crowd dispersed. “Give yourselves a round of applause, people!”
Later in the afternoon, the main threat seemed to be severe weather. However, despite flash flood warnings and thick electric skies, no storm came down.
Though there were no weather interruptions, for some of the Trump supporters and military who sought to join the crowd on the Mall and view the procession, the event was effectively canceled.
Despite evidently sparse crowds for the parade, over an hour before the scheduled start time, multiple entrances to the secure area along the route were closed. Crowds, many of them decked out in Trump merch, wandered for over a mile along the black security fencing downtown looking for a way in. Demonstrators were mixed among them, including some who offered help even as they waved anti-Trump signs.
“They’ve shut down the entrance,” a woman told a man who found himself at the locked gates to the parade. “You have to walk down to 14th.”
“You’re kidding,” he said, shaking his head.
“Enjoy your dictator’s parade!” another protester shouted.
While police and military directed the crowds to certain entrances, those were all closed as well. The situation left hundreds of would-be attendees craning to get glimpses of tanks, planes, and parachutists from behind a security fence. One camo-clad man named Joe described himself as a supporter of both Trump and the military who had driven over ten hours from Alabama to see the parade.
“We haven’t seen much of it,” Joe said.
As people leaving the parade mixed in with those who were unable to see it, they engaged in verbal clashes with the protesters who were also milling outside the fencing.
“Save America! Fuck Trump!” shouted a group of young men who were marching together in a circle.
“There’s kids! Shut up!” yelled a woman who was shepherding two children in red MAGA hats away from the parade.
Not everyone in Washington got to see the military spectacle, but they all had a chance to see the depths of division in the country.
A man named Patrick, who said he was from San Diego, was scootering around the parade exit in a Trump visor with mock shocks of the president’s blonde hair and a shirt declaring the U.S. to be “Back to Back World War Champs.” Patrick told TPM he had come to D.C. “for America.” His comments and the unfolding scene also made clear just how much, at this moment, not everyone agrees on what America means.
“It turns out that’s where we live,” Patrick said before gesturing toward the demonstrators. “Everybody should have a voice — and it shouldn’t be that.”
Photos: ‘No Kings’ Day Protests
A gallery of images from Saturday’s protests, including some submitted by TPM Readers.
Atlanta, Georgia
Los Angeles, California
Chicago, Illinois
Oakland, California
New York, New York
Los Angeles, California
Cleveland, Ohio
Los Angeles, California
St. Paul, Minnesota
Lansing, Michigan
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
San Francisco, California
San Francisco, California
Troy, New York
Chicago, Illinois
Boston, Massachusetts
Madison, Wisconsin
Paris, France
St. Paul, Minnesota
Houston, Texas
Madison, Wisconsin
Chatanooga, Tennessee
Asheville, North Carolina
Austin, Texas
Fort Worth, Texas
Petrolia, California
Sacramento, California
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Kahului, Hawaii
Portland, Oregon
Portland, Oregon
Send In Your Pictures
For those who are attending “No Kings” events today in your areas, I encourage you to send photographs. They don’t need to be striking or unique. We’re just looking for what you’re seeing.
I of course know about the assassination and attack overnight in Minneapolis in which Rep. Melissa Hortman (D) and her spouse were killed.
Redoing 2020?
Hello, it’s the weekend. This is The Weekender ☕️
There’s a story that Trumpists tell about 2020.
The mass protests of that summer were a missed opportunity; Trump, having been thwarted in his desire to call out the military, was too kind. The left took that as an opportunity to riot. In MAGA cosmology, violent protestors then torched cities; the Biden “regime” followed on by spreading a poisonous ideology bent on dividing and demeaning the country.
Continue reading “Redoing 2020?”The Trumpian Elite
My wording in this title is one part provocation. But there is a serious point to it.
American political debates use the term “elite” in a fairly impoverished way. Its use is pejorative rather than descriptive. The elites are the bad guys. And the good elites aren’t actually elites. We’re all familiar with this and perhaps it’s inevitable in a political culture so rooted in the imagery and ideology, if not always the reality, of popular rule and the power and valorization of the ordinary American.
But the elite, in a more descriptive and non-evaluative sense, has been perhaps the biggest reveal of this live subject experiment we’ve been a part of since late January. Law firms, universities, big business, news publications and a million other examples. We’ve all been amazed, disheartened, aghast, whatever you want to call it, by the subservience of the prominent and the powerful. Even those who haven’t adopted a posture of subservience have generally adopted one of silence. I hear it from reporter after reporter. The kind of people they used to go to for quotes — a lot of those people don’t want to give them anymore. And, beyond moral evaluation, we know why: they have things on the line. A rogue President has vast untapped and illegal or unconstitutional but still usable power to come after really anyone who puts their head up. The challenges to Trump have much more been waged by ordinary Americans.
Continue reading “The Trumpian Elite”Right-Wingers Sound Like They WANT Anti-Trump Protests To Turn Violent
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
A Little Too Eager For Riots, Perhaps?
Heading into a weekend of planned nationwide protests against the authoritarianism of President Donald Trump, right-wing figures in politics and law enforcement seem almost giddy at the prospect of protests turning into riots that they can crack down on ruthlessly.
When they’re not conflating all protests with rioting, some right-wing officials have been using the tableau of street demonstrations to preen as tough guys ready to crack heads. The posturing is almost certainly fueled by the overblown right-wing coverage of the sporadic rioting in Los Angeles that depicts a metro area of 18 million people as under siege.
Taking President Trump’s lead, the GOP governors in Texas and Missouri have activated their national guards ahead of the expected protests this weekend.
Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) hasn’t activated the Florida National Guard, but he tried to embody the snarling “Make my day” ethos of Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry, telling a conservative podcast host:
If you’re driving on one of those streets and a mob comes and surrounds your vehicle and threatens you, you have a right to flee for your safety. And so if you drive off and you hit one of these people, that’s their fault for impinging on you.
Elsewhere in Florida, Brevard County officials held a press conference with the tagline: “Florida: The Anti-Riot State.” After acknowledging the right to protest, the local sheriff launched into tough guy mode with a threatening rundown of the things his deputies would do to protestors who engage in violence:
Earlier in the week, the sheriff in Mobile County, Alabama promised it would be a busy weekend for local “orthopedic hand surgeons” if protestors break the perimeter his deputies set. The controversy over his remarks prompted him to issue a somewhat conciliatory statement, noting that he had been asked about the rioting in Los Angeles coming to Mobile:
It is important to clarify that I do not anticipate any such events taking place here. Our past experiences with protests in Mobile have shown them to be peaceful and organized, and I have no reason to believe this weekend’s rally will be any different.
The right-wing reactivity comes after years of overheated rhetoric, disinformation, and demonization directed toward the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, some of which did including rioting, vandalism, and persistent civil unrest. In the ensuing years, the BLM protests became shorthand on the right for left-wing and Antifa violence and morphed into a rationale and excuse for the Jan. 6 attack.
In addition to the ideological edge, there’s a provincial element to some of this. Law enforcement in bigger cities where large crowds more frequently gather have more experience with keeping temperatures down and deescalating things before they get out of hand. Smaller communities and more rural areas have less experience with crowd control, but there’s also the frisson of a big national event touching close to home in some way, however tenuous. You might remember local police being inundated in the summer of 2020 with complaints and tips fueled by crazy rumors and online misinformation circulating on social media about Antifa invaders.
Stay cool this weekend.
Appeals Court Pauses California National Guard Case
In a rapid series of events late yesterday, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer held a hearing on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s lawsuit challenging President Trump’s takeover of the state National Guard, issued a temporary restraining order blocking the move, at which point the Trump administration appealed the order to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which quickly issued an administrative stay last night.
For now, the National Guard deployment will continue through the weekend, with an appeals court hearing scheduled for Tuesday.
Hegseth Won’t Commit To Abiding By Federal Court Orders
Testifying to the House Armed Services Committee, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth cast doubt on whether the administration would comply with lower courts order reining in President Trump’s use of the National Guard but said he would abide by a Supreme Court decision. Hegseth’s comments came before the flurry of court actions later in the day in the California National Guard case.
A Lot More Going On Than Mass Deportations
The Padilla Incident Speaks For Itself
Harvard’s Petrova Released After Four Months
I haven’t focused on the case of Harvard researcher Kseniia Petrova because it doesn’t have the same First Amendment implications of the student protestor deportations or the structural constitutional implication of the Alien Enemies Act and adjacent “facilitate” cases. It just stands for the Trump administration being really shitty.
Petrova’s visa was revoked when she allegedly tried to bring undeclared frog embryos through customs at Boston’s Logan Airport. The Trump administration wants to deport her to Russia, where she fears reprisals for her earlier political activism. When she challenged the immigration proceedings, the Trump administration drummed up smuggling charges against her for the frog embryo incident.
Yesterday, after four months in detention, Petrova was released by agreement of the parties while the criminal and immigrations cases proceed.
Quote Of The Day
“He’s a sadist, but not in any fun way …”–Brian Beutler on Stephen Miller
Officers Sue Over GOP Refusal To Install Jan. 6 Plaque
Two officers who defended the Capitol on Jan. 6 have sued to try to enforce a law calling for the installation on the West Front of a plaque honoring law enforcement’s efforts that day. The House GOP has no apparent plans to put it up.
House GOP Votes To Approve DOGE Cuts
On a 214-212 vote, House Republicans passed a $9.4 billion rescissions bill that enshrines President Trump’s unlawful impoundment of federal spending, including cuts to foreign aid and PBS/NPR – but only after two GOP holdout were cajoled into supporting the measure.
OMB Director Russell Vought has another funding freeze-rescission scheme in the works, covering some $30 billion in funding for EPA, NOAA, HHS, and other agencies, Politico reports.
Chart Of The Day
A new CBO analysis shows how deeply regressive the Trump centerpiece legislation is, an unprecedented one-two punch of tax cuts for high earners and spending cuts for lower income Americans:
Have A Great Weekend
In memory of Brian Wilson:
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Judge Orders Trump To Return Control Of National Guard To Newsom
For months during the 2024 campaign, Donald Trump promised to use the military domestically. His campaign telegraphed it via news coverage and reports from friendly nonprofits; Trump mused about using soldiers against protests. After he defeated Kamala Harris, the then-President-elect reminded everyone that he wanted to see “military assets” used as an adjunct to mass deportations.
Continue reading “Judge Orders Trump To Return Control Of National Guard To Newsom”Headlines Scream That Democrats Are Doomed Come 2030—But The Reality Is Murkier
From 30,000 feet, the trendlines for Democrats are cataclysmic: Blue states, particularly the powerhouses of New York and California, are leaching population that’s being hoovered up by southern states, particularly Florida and Texas.
Continue reading “Headlines Scream That Democrats Are Doomed Come 2030—But The Reality Is Murkier”